An insane and disturbed laugh bubbled up in my throat and escaped my lips as if it were a prisoner dashing its way to freedom. My god, it had been so long since I'd even smiled, and now here I was, laughing evilly like a madman. That seemed to amuse me even further, and I doubled over, chuckling until my lungs begged for air.

I suddenly stopped laughing and straightened up, squaring my shoulders. I twisted my face into a snarl, resembling a feral dog guarding a piece of meat. God, revenge was sweeter than anything I'd ever tasted, yet I couldn't stop a ridiculous, albeit logical, question from rushing through my mind and repeating itself a thousand times over: What now?

My narrowed eyes darted down to my body. My white shirt was splattered with my enemy's blood, a damp, strong-smelling reminder of what had just taken place between us. I grinned, my eyebrows still furrowed angrily, and slicked back my greasy, knotted, shoulder-length hair. I stroked at my inch-long beard, suddenly aware of the fact that I hadn't bothered with grooming since... since she was...

I put my hands in my pockets for a second, then pulled out my left one and stared down at the beaten, worn-out gold ring on my third finger, consumed by happier memories.

I walked into the kitchen of my little house, yawning and stretching sleepily. I was startled by the sight of a tall woman with long hair standing at my fridge. "I could've sworn I left the door locked last night. How did you get in, Anna?"

She turned and grinned at me, showing her white teeth for a split second, before pointing to the bobby pin holding her glossy auburn curls away from her face. "I'm just that good."

I laughed and wrapped my arms around her, "Anna, you know that's going to get you in trouble one of these days."

She pulled away and wrinkled her nose, her sunburned skin crinkling up cutely, "I don't like Anna. Call me Anastasia. It sounds so much better, older. So much more like-"

I put a hand over her belly and kissed her forehead, "More like a mom?"

She beamed, her white teeth flashing, her beautiful face the only thing in my world for that shining moment . Her left hand covered mine, both of us touching her belly, lovingly thinking of the perfect combination of the two of us that rested within its swollen confines.

I closed my eyes and took a sharp, nervous breath, "Anna... You're still my Anna no matter how many children we end up with. And I have to ask you something."

"What is it, honey?" she asked.

I shakily pulled my mother's old ring from the drawer nearest to me and awkwardly fumbled out, "Will you be my wife? I-I love you. Anastasia."

Her jade eyes filled with tears as she slowly nodded.

"Anna, I don't have any money for us right now," I said, sliding the sparkling ring onto her finger, the modest diamond catching the light and dazzlingly reflecting it onto the walls as in a flurry of white specks as she flexed her finger.

"You know I wouldn't normally care about that," She paused to put her left hand back onto her pregnant belly, "But we have to be responsible and think of the little one first."

I nodded, holding her brilliant eyes in place with my dull ones, and pulled the delivery order of the job I'd just taken out of my pocket.

She took the paper and unfolded it, her eyes scanning its wrinkled surface faster than mine ever could. I smiled a little at her intelligence and felt proud to have such a gorgeous and smart woman as my future wife and the mother of my child.

"Victor!" she yelled, her face contorted into an expression of beautiful fury, "Did you read this disclaimer?!"

"Darling," I calmly whispered, "Of course I did. I'm willing to take the risk for you and the baby."

"Tesla Victor Black!" she exclaimed, and I felt the sting as she used the name my mother had pulled right from the cover of Nikola Tesla and You itself, "I would rather live in poverty than as a widow!"

I gathered her up in my arms, holding her from behind, my hand resting on top of her belly, "You used my full name, huh?" I mumbled in her ear. "Powerful. Now let me use yours. Imagine yourself as Anastasia Elizabeth Black."

She relaxed in my grip and seemed to melt in my arms. "You've won me over, love, just like you always do. Just promise you'll be safe."

Falling to my knees and tearing at my hair, my eyes widened in misery. I looked back down at the blood-soaked shirt I was wearing, my enemy's mangled body lying next to me in a tangled heap of torn and broken limbs.

His corpse was covered in bullet holes and riddled with stab wounds, barely recognizable as human. It was truly a beautiful sight. Before death, he'd begged for life, said he had reason to stay alive. I'd told him that so had I, before he'd taken them from me. Of course, he'd spouted some foul lie that I still had reason to live, but I would never buy that.

"Anna, I really wish you hadn't followed me," I muttered for the millionth time as she and I traversed the desert in the dead of night, "Especially in your condition."

"I have to make sure you don't run off with some New Vegas hooker, don't I?" She giggled at the end of her sentence.

I could see the lights of New Vegas in the distance already.

My consciousness fluttered into existence; my head was spinning. Things had a reddish tint for a few seconds, until my eyes adjusted to the dim night, which was barely illuminated by the moon.

I was looking down at my hands, firmly tied with a piece of twine that looked weak enough to snap, but resisted even the roughest of yanks.

My heart thumped hard in my chest, pumping blood to the fresh wounds I'd just gotten. Warm blood trickled from a cut on my forearm, the deepest of the injuries I'd received.

I could barely remember it right now; being ambushed by a group of Khans and falling onto a ground covered in jagged rocks as my head was sideswiped by a shovel. A sudden stream of clarity rushed through my foggy mind.

Anna.

A deep, male voice broke the rush of thoughts I had, "You got what you were after, so pay up."

A smoother voice replied quickly, "You're cryin' in the rain, pally."

I yanked at my wrists a few more futile times.

"Guess who's waking up over here." A third man.

My neck burned fiercely, but I craned it upward. Three men stood before me; two rough and filthy, and the other in a white checkered suit, clean-cut like the kind of man you saw in magazines from before the war. He stood out like a beacon in the night.

The man in the suit took a hit from his cigarette, the cherry glowing red in the blackness around him. He thumped it, stomping it out underfoot. "Time to cash out."

"Would you get it over with?" the man with the deep voice interjected.

The one with the shovel stayed quiet through all of this. He must have been the third voice.

"Maybe Khans kill people without looking them in the face, but I ain't a fink, dig?" The suited man pulled the poker chip I was supposed to deliver out of his coat pocket and flashed it to me, the white metal glinting in the moonlight. "You've made your last delivery, kid."

I fought my restraints. Without that chip, I couldn't get the money I needed to properly marry and start a life with Anna. My eyes darted around for something, anything, I could use to get free. And then I saw it.

Anna lay sprawled out in the dirt, blood pooling around her from a place on her head where a flap of skin and hair hung loose and open to the elements. I could see her skull beneath. Her chest didn't rise and fall with breath, the telltale sign of life. Something lay between her legs in thick, mucky blood, something still and unmoving.

Tears ran down my face as my features twisted into a furious expression and my eyes shot over to the suited man. He was placing the chip back inside his coat, and pulling a pistol out in its place.

"Sorry you got twisted up in this scene. From where you're kneeling, it must seem like an 18-carat run of bad luck. But the truth is..." He pointed the gun directly at my face, his arm relaxed as if he were used to executing innocent couriers and this was as casual to him as bathing and shaving his baby-smooth face. "...The game was rigged from the start."

I remembered chasing this man doggedly, being offered money here and there to help towns or people along the way. My favorite I'd helped had been Boone, a sniper who promised to help get me my revenge just as I helped get him his.

"It's not enough..." I muttered.

I turned to Boone, "What now? It's not enough, what now?!"

Boone shook his head, "It's never enough. Revenge is great, but it'll never be enough."

A little sound emerged from behind a desk, and my head shot around. A young girl with hair and skin white as snow sniffled, sobbed, and shuddered as she crawled out. She shuddered violently as she crawled over to Benny's body and threw herself over it, reddening the white checkered dress she was wearing. The ribbon in her hair was loose and nearly falling out.

"No more..." She muttered in a voice as tiny and broken as she was. "He's dead, so just get out. Kill me if you have to, just leave his body alone. I can't even recognize him as my daddy anymore..."

Daddy. The word turned itself over in my head in revulsion in the same way my stomach flipped at hearing it.

Daddy. I could have been one.

Daddy. I'd taken her family, just as Benny had taken mine.

Daddy. If I ran, this would be an endless cycle of revenge.

I raised my revolver to my skull and pulled the trigger, breaking the cycle before it could begin again.